what would you be doing today if you only had 37 days to live?

24 April 2008

Poets announce their large, unadulterated cowness

Our National
Poetry Month Poemapalooza is drawing to a close. By my estimation, we’ve got a
week left, or perhaps less. I can never remember which months have 31 days. Is
it the months on the knuckles, or the
ones in-between the knuckles? Let’s throw
caution to the wind and play it by ear. It will end when it needs to end, and
not a moment sooner.

And what would
National Poetry Month be without at least a few poems by my dear sweet funny Billy
Collins? By the way, as a result of my conversation with him just before the New Year (thanks to Mr Brilliant), his phone number is in my cell phone. I’m
always only 10 digits away from him, should Mt. Vesuvius erupt and I need
to reach him right away. He’d want to know. He’d want to be the first poet on
the scene, I just know it.

Some languid afternoons when I'm not chasing a four-year-old away from the edge of the earth or begging the costumer for the local Shakespeare company to sew a prom dress to match a Montreat tartan kilt, I scroll through
the numbers on my happy Treo just to see—yes, there you are, and my mother, and the ophthalmologist, the orthodontist, the tuba teacher, the special collections librarian, the friend from graduate school who always made me laugh with his impression of Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" ("I coulda been a critical theorist," he would wail and we would laugh our nerdy English major laugh), and then,
all of a sudden, there’s his name, peering
at me as if from behind a wall. “Collins, Billy,” it says. And then his phone
number. Not his office number, but his home phone number. The very one.

Imagine his
surprise (and no doubt his delight) if I were to lose my phone one day and the person who finds it at the soccer
field decides to call someone in the phone list to try to locate me. They’ll be
standing, sweating, near the fifty-yard-line (if there is such a thing on a
soccer field—let’s not get bogged down in details), and he’ll be standing in
his corduroy slippers and man pajamas at a green slate kitchen counter, the toast having just popped up and still in its pre-raspberry jam state, in a fine morning light, holding the New York Times Book Review in one hand,
folded just down the middle and with lots of slightly ranting notes in the margin, and picking up the phone with the other. “Who?” he’ll
say in that voice we love so much, and in that instant a whole lifetime of unknown and unexpected
and surprising and just plain ineffable longing will erupt inside him.

Afternoon with
Irish Cows

There were a few
dozen who occupied the fieldacross the road
from where we lived,stepping all day
from tuft to tuft,their big heads
down in the soft grass,though I would
sometimes pass a windowand look out to
see the field suddenly emptyas if they had taken
wing, flown off to another country.

Then later, I
would open the blue front door,and again the
field would be full of their munchingor they would be
lying downon the
black-and-white maps of their sides,facing in all
directions, waiting for rain.How mysterious,
how patient and dumbfoundedthey appear in the
long quiet of the afternoon.

But every once in
a while, one of themwould let out a
sound so phenomenalthat I would put
down the paperor the knife I was
cutting an apple withand walk across
the road to the stone wallto see which one
of them was being torchedor pierced through
the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded
like pain until I could seethe noisy one,
anchored there on all fours,her neck
outstretched, her bellowing headlaboring upward as
she gave voiceto the rising,
full-bodied crythat began in the
darkness of her bellyand echoed up
through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.

Then I knew that
she was only announcingthe large,
unadulterated cowness of herself,pouring out the
ancient apologia of her kindto all the green
fields and the gray clouds,to the limestone
hills and the inlet of the blue bay,while she regarded
my head and shouldersabove the wall
with one wild, shocking eye.

I don't know why I haven't visited your blog before, but know I'll be back again. You understand my heart. You really, really understand about Billy Collins. How special he is. I read the post about your phone call. I'm ok with that, because I've met him - twice. First time, I said "This is for you", and he said "Thank you very much". Second time, he said "We've met already", and I said "Glurg, blurg..." you know... Next time, I'm aiming for 24 minutes and 37 seconds of conversation!